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N.A.A.C.P. Prods Obama on Job Losses

With unemployment among blacks at more than 15 percent, the N.A.A.C.P. will join several other groups on Tuesday to call on President Obama to do more to create jobs.

The organizations — including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group— will make clear that they believe the president’s $787 billion stimulus program has not gone far enough to fight unemployment.

They will call for increased spending for schools and roads, billions of dollars in fiscal relief to state and local governments to forestall more layoffs and a direct government jobs program, “especially in distressed communities facing severe unemployment.”

In speaking out on jobs, N.A.A.C.P. leaders say they are not trying to pick a fight with the first African-American president. Rather, they say, they are pressing Mr. Obama in an area where they believe he wants to be pressured.

“It’s time for us to really stoke this issue up,” said Hilary O. Shelton, the N.A.A.C.P.’s senior vice president for advocacy and policy. “We’re not so much trying to convince him to do something he doesn’t want to do, but urging him to move forward on an issue we have agreement on.”

African-American leaders say it makes sense to pressure the president on jobs because the unemployment rate for blacks has jumped to 15.7 percent, from 8.9 percent when the recession started 23 months ago. That compares with 13.1 percent for Hispanics and 9.5 percent for whites.

The black unemployment rate has climbed above 20 percent in several states, reaching 23.9 percent in Michigan and 20.4 percent in South Carolina.

In recent months, the N.A.A.C.P. has lobbied Mr. Obama on numerous issues, including the hate crimes bill and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which makes it easier for employees to sue over pay discrimination. But this is the first time in Mr. Obama’s presidency that the organization is throwing its full weight into the economic debate.

“It's time for us to really stoke this issue up,” Hilary O. Shelton, a senior N.A.A.C.P. official, said of black unemployment.Credit
Alex Wong/Getty Images

“Make no mistake, for us this is the civil rights issue of the moment,” said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference. “Unless we resolve the national job crisis, it will make it hard to address all of our other priorities.”

Mr. Obama has invited groups nationwide to voice their views and recommendations on jobs in preparation for his job summit next month.

“Obama keeps saying, ‘Push me to do the right thing,’ said Steven Pitts, a labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “I don’t see this as any break with Obama. The current political alignment of forces doesn’t support a new economic stimulus package. They’re trying to create an alignment of political forces to counteract that.”

Kevin A. Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative group, said it was laudable that the N.A.A.C.P. and other liberal groups were pressuring Mr. Obama, although he said their call for additional stimulus was wrong.

“Everybody should pressure him,” Mr. Hassett said. “And it might be the conservative groups aren’t pressuring him enough, because they think maybe he won’t listen. I would hope the people pressuring the president would push away from the divisive type of recommendations that we need more of the same, that we need more stimulus.”

Mr. Hassett called for cutting taxes to create jobs and for reducing many workers to three-fifths or four-fifths time in work-sharing programs to avoid layoffs.

The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group, coordinated the jobs statement being released Tuesday, which will also be joined by the Center for Community Change.

“Despite an effective and bold recovery package, we are still facing a prolonged period of high unemployment,” the groups say. “Two years from now, absent further action, we are likely to have unemployment at 8 percent or more, a higher rate than attained even at the worst point of the last two downturns.”

The groups call for spurring private-sector job growth through tax credits and loans to small and medium businesses. They note that 17.5 percent of the labor force — more than 27 million Americans — are underemployed, including one in four minority workers. They say they expect one-third of the work force — and 40 percent of minority workers —to be unemployed or underemployed at some point over the next year.

“Americans are confronting the worst jobs situation in more than half a century,” the groups say. “This is not a situation we must continue to tough out. A robust plan to create jobs in transparent, effective, and equitable ways can put America back to work.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 17, 2009, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: N.A.A.C.P. Prods Obama on Job Losses. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe